2017-2018 Concerts

We are pleased to announce our concerts for the upcoming 2017-2018 season.

Mass Choir celebrating Canada 150

October 15, 2017, time and location TBA

Join us as local Uxbridge choirs come together to celebrate Canada’s 150th Anniversary in song.

Pacem et Gloria

December 16, 2017, 7:30 pm location TBA

Presenting a multi-faceted program that reflects Peace on Earth and Glory to God. This program weaves new Canadian compositions with masterworks of the choral repertoire, new and old, that befit the Christmas season. Selections will include:

Francis Poulenc: Gloria

Johann Pachelbel: Magnificat

William Mathias: Ave Rex

Kim André Arnesen: Cradle Hymn

Thomas Baker: Christmas Trilogy

Stuart Beaudoin: A Time to Come

Two Requiems: Fauré and Duruflé

April 29th, 2017, 3 pm location TBA

Come hear 2 settings of the requiem mass by French masters Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Duruflé, with organ accompaniment. Thomas Baker will conduct.

Maurice Duruflé: Requiem Op. 9 (1947)

Duruflé’s Requiem is a masterpiece of the 20th century choral repertoire. Based on Gregorian chant but infused with the luxurious harmonies of relatively modern French composers Debussy, Fauré, and Messiaen, Duruflé’s Requiem is a work of subtle beauty and grandeur.

Duruflé’s greatest composition, the Requiem, Op. 9, completed in September 1947, enjoys a reputation as one of the undisputed masterpieces of the twentieth-century choral repertoire. The single piece most responsible for establishing his fame worldwide, it continues to enjoy frequent performances in the West and the East alike. Reviewers have described it as softly luminous, sumptuous, suffused with a tender radiance, of a noble and restrained eloquence and a sweet and serene light, a work of scrupulous craft and exquisite sensibility, having beautiful unity and real grandeur.

Gabriel Fauré: Messe de Requiem Op. 48 (1893)

Fauré’s Requiem is perhaps one of the most beloved and most performed choral masterworks, known for it’s great serenity. There is no “day of wrath” or hellfire here. Fauré was more inspired by the true meaning of the word “Requiem”, or “rest” … as in eternal rest through peaceful acceptance and release. Most fittingly, Fauré’s Requiem elevates, comforts, and reassures.

“It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience. The music of Gounod has been criticized for its overinclination towards human tenderness. But his nature predisposed him to feel this way: religious emotion took this form inside him. Is it not necessary to accept the artist’s nature? As to my Requiem, perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different.”